Dear Professor: A Chronicle of Absences is a collection of over two hundred often involuntarily comical emails in which students excuse themselves for missing class. The result is a satirical yet unexpectedly sympathetic collective portrait of modern-day academia where both students and teachers feel pressured to comply with the impositions of hyper-connectivity.

The second volume of the African Higher Education Dynamics Series brings together the research of an international network of higher education scholars with interest in higher education and student politics in Africa. Most authors are early career academics who teach and conduct research in universities across the continent, and who came together for a research project and related workshops and a symposium on student representation in African higher education governance. The book includes theoretical chapters on student organising, student activism and representation; chapters on historical and current developments in student politics in Anglophone and Francophone Africa; and in-depth case studies on student representation and activism in a cross-section of universities and countries. The book provides a unique resource for academics, university leaders and student affairs professionals as well as student leaders and policy-makers in Africa and elsewhere.

"In the anthology Didactic classroom studies. A potential research direction didactic classroom studies are characterized and discussed in relation to, on the one hand, didactics and, on the other hand, classroom studies. It is argued that classroom studies has particular potential for realizing the ambitions that constitute didactics in empirical studies – to simultaneously focus processes of teaching and learning as well as the content of these processes and how they interact, and at the same time emphasize that teaching and learning as classroom work is intentional and flows towards specific goals. Classroom studies are not limited to pay (empirical) attention to the student, teacher or content, but have the capacity to focus on how these aspects interact and depend on each other. The research is delimited in contextual and situational terms of teaching-learning wholes, rather than primarily in terms of components (e.g., student, teacher or content). This translates to that classroom studies can capture and examine teaching and learning processes including their dependence of specific contexts in which they are conducted.&#xD;&#xD;The potential that lies in the work of classroom studies for didactics is attended to and described in more detail than previous research has done along with a set of example studies, which is a significant contribution of the anthology as a whole. The book gives examples of eight different classroom studies that focus different content areas with varied but related theoretical perspectives and specific methodological approaches. Through these concrete examples, as described and discussed in relation to each other in two concluding commentary chapter, the didactic value of the studies is made visible and didactic classroom studies are described as constituting ‘a potential research direction’. Through a detailed analysis of the chapters with empirical studies – in terms of their research questions and knowledge interests, research contexts, theoretical and analytical perspectives, specific empirical designs and didactical consequences – a number of issues are identified that could be addressed and further developed. In this way, the volume contributes not only to identifying didactic classroom studies as a potentially central research focus in educational science but also outlines a further direction for this research."&#xD;

There is an extensive literature conducted from a range of theoretical perspectives and methodologies on the role of groups and student learning in higher education. However here the concept of the ‘group’ is heavily contested at a theoretical level but within higher education practice, characterizing the group has tended to be clear cut. Groups of students are often formed within the parameters of specific educational programs to address explicitly defined learning objectives. These groups are often small scale and achieve tasks through cooperative or collaborative learning. Cooperative learning involves students dividing roles and responsibilities between group members, so learning becomes an independent process and outcome. On the other hand, collaborative learning involves students working together by developing shared meanings and knowledge to solve a task or problem. From this perspective, learning is conceptualized as both a social process and individual outcome. That is, collaborative learning may facilitate individual student conceptual understanding and hence lead to higher academic achievement. The empirical evidence is encouraging as has been shown that students working collaboratively tend to achieve higher grades than students working independently. However the above perspectives on student engagement assume that groups are formed within the confines of formal learning environments (e.g. lecture theaters), involve students on the same degree program, have the explicit function of achieving a learning task and disband once this has been achieved. However, students may also use existing social networks such as friendship groups as a mechanism for learning, which may occur outside of formal learning environments. There is an extensive literature on the role and benefits of friendship groups on student learning within primary and secondary education but there is a distinct lack of research within higher education. This ebook is innovative and ambitious and will highlight and consolidate, the current understanding of the role that student based engagement behaviors may serve in effective pedagogy. A unique aspect of this research topic will be the fact that scholars will also be welcome to submit articles that describe the efficacy of the full range of approaches that have been employed to facilitate student engagement across the sector.

Was the 1968 movement a cultural success but a political failure? The six studies compiled in this volume probe the structural changes and shifting boundaries of political life in the 1960s and 1970s to assess the impact of the 1968 movement. Among other phenomena, they examine the theater as a potential medium for staging politics, and television as a vehicle in social protest.

The main objective of this Research Topic is to determine the conditions that place students at risk of school failure, identifying student and context variables.In spite of the fact that there is currently little doubt about how one learns and how to teach, in some countries of the “developed world,” there is still there is a high rate of school failure. Although the term “school failure” is a very complex construct, insofar as its causes, consequences, and development, from the field of educational psychology, the construct “student engagement” has recently gained special interest in an attempt to deal with the serious problem of school failure. School engagement builds on the anatomy of the students’ involvement in school and describes their feelings, behaviors, and thoughts about their school experiences. So, engagement is an important component of students’ school experience, with a close relationship to achievement and school failure. Children who self-set academic goals, attend school regularly and on time, behave well in class, complete their homework, and study at home are likely to interact adequately with the school social and physical environments and perform well in school. In contrast, children who miss school are more likely to display disruptive behaviors in class, miss homework frequently, exhibit violent behaviors on the playground, fail subjects, be retained and, if the behaviors persist, quit school. Moreover, engagement should also be considered as an important school outcome, eliciting more or less supportive reactions from educators. For example, children who display school-engaged behaviors are likely to receive motivational and instructional support from their teachers. The opposite may also be true. But what makes student engage more or less? The relevant literature indicates that personal variables (e.g., sensory, motor, neurodevelopmental, cognitive, motivational, emotional, behavior problems, learning difficulties, addictions), social and/or cultural variables (e.g., negative family conditions, child abuse, cultural deprivation, ethnic conditions, immigration), or school variables (e.g., coexistence at school, bullying, cyberbullying) may concurrently hinder engagement, preventing the student from acquiring the learnings in the same conditions as the rest of the classmates.

Whose History? aims to illustrate how historical novels and their related genres may be used as an engaging teacher/learning strategy for student teachers in pre-service teacher education courses. It does not argue all teaching of History curriculum in pre-service units should be based on the use of historical novels as a stimulus, nor does it argue for a particular percentage of the use of historical novels in such courses. It simply seeks to argue the case for this particular approach, leaving the extent of the use of historical novels used in History curriculum units to the professional expertise of the lecturers responsible for the units.

The number of students entering into Higher Education (HE) continues to grow and as such the sector now stands at the threshold of a major shift in its philosophy. No longer does the academic prerogative belong to a generation who valued learning for the sake of enlightenment. Many contemporary undergraduate students enter their programmes of study with a primary desire to improve their position on the subsequent employability market. Universities have been quick to meet this need and institutional offerings have followed suit, enabling students to gain experience in a range of additional and subsidiary programmes that focus on the provision of 'value added' benefits. Here, students are encouraged to develop expertise in a range of topics from entrepreneurship and enterprise to intellectual property and even leadership skills. The first round of casualties that fall victim to such a shift are those programmes of study embedded within the humanities. As is evidenced by the falling numbers of enrolling students, the incoming cohort is less likely now to engage with such programmes, while participation in programmes that have a clear employability component has never been so high. To ensure that the HE sector continues to enable graduates to become effective citizens who contribute to the betterment of society a range of general questions need to be addressed. What does it mean to be an ‘authentic' university in the modern era? What are the real student expectations of HE and how are education providers framing and meeting these expectations? Is a new breed of academic leadership needed that will both meet the expectations of the students and guide the aspirations of academic staff? Finally, do we need an opportunity to reflect on the effective design and delivery of curriculum? Should the undergraduate student body play more of a role in the design of the curriculum or should the undergraduate student body play more of a role in the design of the curriculum or should they remain the recipients of a programme that has been designed by subject specialists? The scope of this book is wide but it brings the design and delivery of higher education programmes under the empirical gaze of educational psychology. That is to say, all chapters centre on the impact of higher educational programmes on the student-teacher relationship, student learning, achievement and identity. It is therefore crucial to explore the psychological impact of higher education institutions and how these can then be used to inform innovative educational practice and policy.

"How does social media affect working life in Higher Education? How are universities harnessing its power to aid student learning? This innovative collection brings together academics and those working in professional services to examine these questions and more. The diverse and expert contributors analyse the many ways social media can be used to enhance teaching and learning, research, professional practice, leadership, networking and career development. The impact of social media is evaluated critically, with an eye both to the benefits and the problems of using these new forms of digital communication.This is the first volume to give such detailed attention to this area of high interest. Its innovative approach extends to its creation, with contributors found via their presence on Twitter. The short and impactful chapters are accessible while retaining an academic focus through their application of relevant learning theory and educational context.Social Media and Higher Education is essential reading for any professional working in higher education, including lecturers teaching education courses. It is also significant for researchers looking at more recent developments in higher education and what it means to work in a modern higher education environment."

An approach to performance-based assessments that embeds assessments in digital games in order to measure how students are progressing toward targeted goals.To succeed in today's interconnected and complex world, workers need to be able to think systemically, creatively, and critically. Equipping K-16 students with these twenty-first-century competencies requires new thinking not only about what should be taught in school but also about how to develop valid assessments to measure and support these competencies. In Stealth Assessment, Valerie Shute and Matthew Ventura investigate an approach that embeds performance-based assessments in digital games. They argue that using well-designed games as vehicles to assess and support learning will help combat students' growing disengagement from school, provide dynamic and ongoing measures of learning processes and outcomes, and offer students opportunities to apply such complex competencies as creativity, problem solving, persistence, and collaboration. Embedding assessments within games provides a way to monitor players' progress toward targeted competencies and to use that information to support learning.Shute and Ventura discuss problems with such traditional assessment methods as multiple-choice questions, review evidence relating to digital games and learning, and illustrate the stealth-assessment approach with a set of assessments they are developing and embedding in the digital game Newton's Playground. These stealth assessments are intended to measure levels of creativity, persistence, and conceptual understanding of Newtonian physics during game play. Finally, they consider future research directions related to stealth assessment in education.